Has Gamespot become more strict with their reviews?

In the past there were certain games you could always count on to get at least a 9 though usually they would get rated as a 10. However I've noticed more and more that lately a lot of high caliber games are now being rated 8.5. I've seen it most recently with Final Fantasy XIII and Heavy Rain both games raking in 8.5 scores. At the same time MW2 and Halo ODST managed to get a 9.0, so maybe it's just that they really like FPS's. Either way if they are being tougher with the ratings then I would think such a trend would have to be attributed to sports games like Madden and NBA 2K10 with an emphasis on being much tougher with their ratings. Anyway what do you guys think?

big companies that make games like modern warfare and halo pay popular review sites (like gamespot) to give there games good reviews.-ICON-

Judging from Halo and CoD...I wouldn't say "Strict" is the right word.

Gamespot is still gamepsot to me. They give drivel like MW2 a 9.5 and they typically either don't review a PC game or they give it a lower score even when it is the better version. Business as usual as far as I can tell.